Trade ships usually stall in the docking lane of a station. Pushing the stalled trade ship close to the docking port of the station usually causes it to complete its trade and then resume its normal behavior, while destroying the bugged ship allows a new one to spawn. This appears to happen at NPC stations as well as player owned stations and is still happening in 0.15.6.

This happens in almost every player home sector with stations so that might be a clue, after destroying or pushing them they will work again for a while but after that they lose track again. So maybe it has to do with the sector unloading while they are being tractored in.

So maybe it has to do with the sector unloading while they are being tractored in.

Yes. I have noticed AI trader ships in my Sector are fine, up until the moment I decide to jump out of the Sector while they're already near the Station. When I return, they're stuck, and no new traders will come in, effectively cancelling all money made from that Station selling goods. I'm guessing that a "busy Station" with a trader queued to come pick up supplies doesn't attract new traders until the queued one is dealt with. If that queued trader is stuck, therefore, production sales grind to a halt.

I propose two fixes:

obviously, the bug that involves trader ships getting stuck; but also

allow Stations to attract more than one trader at a time. If a Station can have 4 docking ports, or 6, or 18, why can it only have one trader docked at a time? It doesn't make sense and it makes the galaxy feel a lot more empty than it could be.